ONE POEM – Helen Ferris

In the southern heat,
giddiness spread in a slick of sweat.
A stale and sweet smell embraced the girls
as they danced and danced
and would not stop dancing.

ONE POEM – Balfour McBride

They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.

ONE POEM – Emily Tee

and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth

ONE POEM – Susan Shea

we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together

Porridge Books of the Year 2023

From Prince Harry’s TMI memoir to Barbara Kingslover’s Appalachian bildungsroman, the team at Porridge share their favourite novels and non-fiction reads of 2023.  

ONE POEM – Anna D’Alton

She travels the world, storms the Venice Biennale, exhibits at the Guggenheim, Tate, Pompidou – you name it, parties with the grimy glitterati in LA, Madrid, São Paulo, breaks a Sotheby’s sale record and dazzles the fawning curators and collectors at every chandeliered benefit dinner.

COMFORT FOODS // A Tamalada by M.A. Dubbs

Mom’s in charge and tells us to watch how it’s done,
tucking and folding
until she holds above our heads, like a baptized child,
our exemplar tamale
“Just like that!” ¡Perfecto!

Angela Townsend – Inky

No one saw the tattoo coming. In high school, I was not voted Most Likely To Get Inked. I was not voted Seventeenth Most Likely To Get Inked. No, I was the girl for whom they had to invent a new yearbook category: Most Likely To Attend Seminary. At sleepovers, I squiggled under the covers…

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ONE POEM – Mel McMahon

As if by sticking up taut yellow tape
They could control the space
Like some kind of boxing match
Where a ring-side bell
Could take a firm grip of time

Steelers Country — Travis Dahlke

I convince Landa to be my accomplice as she culls rotten lettuce heads. They let Landa wear a knife on her belt. She has a weak heart and I think destroying crops makes her feel powerful.

ONE POEM – S.M. Tsai

White fabric sagging
Exposed lipsticked mouth
Small exposed mouth screaming
Exposed mouth with nose ring

TWO POEMS – Rachel Bruce

Gravity balances on my shoulders,
tosses back the balls while I wait
for their sandy pop in my palms.
I get lighter by the day.

ONE POEM – Italo Ferrante

the sound of sliced cabbages
shadows painted on the floor
brick façades & blunt gables

a swarm of rats follow a lone woman
wherever she sleepwalks

all bedsheet ladders lead to you

TWO POEMS – Salvatore Difalco

You reached for the branch
without looking at me as I
signalled you to back away,
to veer away from the tree,
where a snake in full makeup
had hit its mark, awaiting a cue.

Love in the Age of Instant Mashed Potatoes – Anne-Laure White

The first potatoes I loved were the dehydrated shreds sold in cereal box-style cartons at Key Foods. My mother gave them some delicacy, stirring in milk, butter, salt. On holidays her mashed potatoes were perfect, and doted on accordingly. They were adjusted hourly for flavour and texture, refrigerated overnight, and reheated slowly on the day….

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FLASH FICTION — Beth Morrow

We’re hit with a waft of espresso. The thunder of grinding coffee beans. The high-pitched hiss of steamed milk. Our wish is granted.

Wood for The Trees — Joanna Garbutt

There is something in her hands. Something in a large Pyrex dish. It is hot, very hot. She nearly drops it on the floor but instead the kitchen work top catches it. The dish itself doesn’t smash. It isn’t a big enough drop for that. She looks down at it, trying to work out what it is. 

Bessarabian Days – William Fleeson

A Chisinau bus will teach you the city. The Moldovan capital’s network of these vehicles, and its trolleybuses and marshrutkas – the decrepit minivans, unchanged since Soviet days – could take you anywhere, for nearly nothing. Mostly you paid in physical stress. Riders crammed into spaces meant for people half their size; young mothers loaded…

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Garden of Weeds – K.P. Taylor

My mother loved her garden: the Lily of the Nile, the roses, the lemon tree, the hydrangea at her bedroom window. Hydrangeas flower blue or pink depending on your soil – hers were always blue. The weeds, however, she did not love. “A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place,” she would…

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The Author’s Version of Events – Charley Barnes

A True Crime Story Which Never Happened I [hereafter known as The Author] have been considering truth and fact. Truth, as something malleable. Fact, as something that influences the changing of truths.[1] The Author has considered this in particular detail in relation to True Crime and the ways in which truth is manipulated here (no,…

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ONE POEM — Terence Dooley

Limonero Moon I had a sour thought, as if I bitinto a lemon, and the bitter mistsettled on my naked eye like dewor vinaigrette: the red eye weptand suppurated, pitying itself.I was a thought ungrateful, a thought sharpand zestless, pithy: what had given methe pip? The cloudy juice ran down my cheek. As in your…

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TWO POEMS – Jim Lloyd

Peregrine has put them up;
one, against one thousand. They
need eyes in the back of their head.
His eyes, forwards only, burning
on the brown-gold and white
pulsating flock.

ONE POEM – Clare Starling

And here I am, unsure of my value
Crushing myself through the doors 
Ice and dirt crumbling from me
Leaving meltwater on the mat

ONE POEM – Elizabeth Gibson

like you are the aurora borealis, a thirsty balloon,
wanting and worthy of more air, ready to gorge
on forest fruits, and salt and garlic, and cinnamon,
like you are every season and its harvest

ONE POEM – Eugene Ryan

Our joke ran
that I would hand him the ladybird kite,
him in his little black windbreaker,
and I’d plead with him to hold on,
and he’d smile like all the world wasn’t enough,

ONE POEM – D. Parker

stick your worm-like head
to the surface of muddy waters
will yourself into existence

TWO POEMS – John Kefala Kerr

I grab the deck rail,
expecting a disturbance
—a pitching and yawing—

but the ferry glides smoothly
over the sea’s fleecy crimp,
like a brush through kid fibre.

ONE POEM – Andrej Bilovsky

They don’t make
houses pink and white
like coconut ice-cream.
They’re always plain, dull colors.
It’s all so easy
when it should be exhilarating.

ONE POEM – Ben Nardolilli 

The body wants to do the dropout boogie,
a way to just slowly spiral out
of reality and not include my self with its accessories

TWO POEMS – Adam Stokell

I see the cat before the cat sees me.
White with black splotches, a longhair.

Leaving the law behind it,
stealing easily as light fails

ONE POEM – Andrew Button

Everybody called her ‘a character’,
a regular in the library
in her shabby Barbour jacket
and crumpled hat perched
on hair dishevelled as a bird’s nest.

ONE POEM – Brian Alkire

That albino slug
looks like mobile marzipan,
bending its neck for a nap
in the stitchwort
tufted beside the road.

ONE POEM – Miriam Ashford

If you walk along a path
between forest and shore
between grains eroded by the sea
they were mountains once

INTERVIEW | Artist Mimi Kunz

I found that writing and art keep me sane, they’re like a room of my own in a time when I’m rarely alone.

FICTION | Bruises – Keenan Lew

They say a lot of the work of being poly is scheduling. When I say ‘they’ I mean smug influencers with poorly produced podcasts, and when I say ‘being poly’ I hate myself.